Everything Not Previously Dead Is Now Dead

Now marketing is dead. And it's not just dead, it's dead in caps, as in, "Marketing is Dead."

This time it must be true because it comes from some genius who teaches at Stanford and writes for the Harvard Business Review. It seems like the gaudier the credentials, the dopier the patter. (Which is stolen directly from one of my all-time favorite lines: Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett, says: "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.")

You can read about the terrible death of marketing (such a pity, it was so young) on a website called Yes and Know (groan.) The name of the piece in question is What Replaces Marketing? Apparently, the answer is "shared purpose" (double-extra-groan.)

You see, we ad hacks are no longer responsible for selling stuff, instead we are social workers whose job is to "engage in a community" and "co-create with people."

After feeding us this baloney sandwich, the writer goes off into hyperspace about Apple retail stores, completely misunderstanding Apple's business strategy. If ever there was a secretive, paranoid, walled culture that absolutely, positively refused to "engage in a community" or "co-create with people" it's Apple.

But you really can't appreciate the depths of the cluelessness of this meatball until you hear her advice for Best Buy on how to resurrect their rapidly decomposing carcass...

"...become social thru Pinterest...all of a sudden you become a magnet for what’s hot."

All of a sudden! Wow, that was easy! Man, this marketing stuff is fun!

We here at The Ad Contrarian World Headquarters would like to welcome Pinterest to the official registry of Idiot's-Answers-To-Everything. It joins the hallowed ranks of podcasts, widgets, Facebook, apps, Twitter, social media, and content.

I know that the people who write all these insufferable "____ is Dead" articles are imbeciles, but please, when will the Guardians Of The Internet stop publishing this crap? Who the hell is in charge here?

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans.""As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."